Meny
  • It is 86 years today since Joyce Carol Oates was born.

    American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...

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  • It is 67 years today since Alexandra Marinina was born.

    Alexandra Marinina is the pseudonym of Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva, a Russian author born in Lviv, western Ukraine. Her father, who died in 1973, was a police officer and her mother a lawyer. When she was still young, the family moved to Leningrad (now St.Petersburg) and then to Moscow. She attended an English-language school in Leningrad, and the Rimsky-Korsakov conservatory in Moscow. She...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait of Donald E. Westlake

Westlake, Donald E.
1933 - 2008

Donald Edwin Westlake was an American author of Irish descent born in Brooklyn, New York. As a small boy, he moved with his...

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Portrait image of Denise Mina

Mina, Denise
1966 -

Denise Mina is a Scottish lawyer and author of crime novels. She was born in East Kilbride, Glasgow. Her father was an oil...

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Portrait image of Alexander McCall Smith

McCall Smith, Alexander
1948 -

The British author Alexander McCall Smith – called Sandy by family and friends – was born in Bulawayo in the then British col...

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Portrait of James Runcie

Runcie, James
1959 -

James Robert Runcie is an author, documentary film maker, television producer and playwright. He was born in Cambridge and...

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